Build the School You Wish Existed (and Let Students Run the Culture) with Will Campbell

(upbeat music) Building a school from scratch sounds like a dream until you realize that most educators are copying the same playbook, the same dusty and broken educational experience that they wanted to change in the first place. We say we want innovation, but we design schools just like the ones we attended. We talk about student voice. So why do the adults control so much of the classroom experience? We preach, fail forward and that it's safe to make mistakes and then we punish teachers, we punish students for taking risks and sticking their neck out, trying to be innovative. So what if we could press reset? What would we do? What if we could build a school where students literally create the culture themselves? Where teachers have built in professional development within the school day and school week where innovation isn't about the latest tech, but more about redesigning every single touch point that human beings experience while on campus. Well, that's exactly what today's guest has done. Will Campbell is the founding head of Franklin School in New Jersey, excuse me, in Jersey City, also in New Jersey, and the world is noticing what they're up to. His school was just named the most innovative school in the world by T for education, but the real story is not the award. It's how will and the team got there. And that's the story that we tell in today's episode. I'm Danny Bauer and this is Better Leaders, Better Schools, the original Ruckus cast for visionary school leaders who wanna do school different. They wanna reimagine what's possible even within a traditional setting so that we create a campus experience that's worth showing up for. And thanks to listeners just like you. This show ranks in the top 1% of all shows worldwide. Thanks for pressing play. I'm glad you're here, Ruckus Maker. We'll be back for the main content after a few messages from our show sponsors. (upbeat music) For over 30 years, ODP Business Solutions has helped schools transform from whiteboards to smartboards. Why? Because when you get the right tools, everyone wins. Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to revolutionize your school's learning spaces. It's ODPbusiness.com/education. This episode is brought to you by Play Piper. At Piper, we believe STEM doesn't have to feel out of reach. Too many kids love gaming, but give up on science and engineering because school doesn't spark their interest. That's where Piper comes in. They have hands on STEM kits designed to turn curiosity into confidence and keep the pipeline of future innovators flowing strong. You can learn more at playpiper.com/ruckus at playpiper.com/ruckus. (upbeat music) Over 1 million teachers rely on IXL because it's empowering. It helps them make better decisions with reliable data and it adapts instruction based on student performance. You can get started today at IXL.com/leaders at IXL.com/leaders. (upbeat music) All right, and welcome to the show. - Thanks so much for having me really exciting. - So talk to me what it's like building a school from a clean slate because somebody school leaders, right? They don't have that opportunity. - It's so difficult to describe because I think it's something that so many people would love to have that opportunity. And then when you're in it, you have the autonomy, you have the backing of the leadership group. You know that you have been able to also build a fantastic team. It's then being comfortable with building the bridge while you're walking on it. And knowing that idea of any kind of bridge when it first starts can have a couple of wobbles in it. But I would probably say the advantage, the best advantage that I've ever had in any of the careers or positions that I've held is I actually had a pretty significant lead time to just look at everything around the world when it came to education. What was successful? What was historically successful and needed to be continued or a part of the infrastructure or bedrock? What was redundant now and not built for purpose? How could we make teaching more exciting for the people that used to love teaching and potentially get them back into the workforce? And then also just trusting young people to be leaders much earlier because we didn't have to follow any of the infrastructure or certain traditions from particular schools. We were able to build a school that was looked fantastic, was purposely built, but then allowed the students to build the culture. And I think that's one of the greatest things that I've ever been a part of is trusting young people but giving them the leadership, the guidance, and the knowledge that not everything can be a yes but everything doesn't have to be a no. And then I'd say the last part to it as well is we haven't finished building it. I don't think we ever will. And that's the mentality that we have here is that just because it's great, it doesn't mean you can't make it better. And if it's broken, fix it, but fix it with stakeholders and fix it with people that it might take it off you in the future. So, you know, bring people along for the ride. - Yeah, I wanna, we'll get to the trust in young people 'cause that's an important piece. And I love, I wanna double click also on that idea that the students are building the culture. So that's fascinating to me too. But this idea of building the bridge, right? As it's wildly or you're starting to build it or flying the airplane, right? It's like the type of thing in like the comfort level, I think is tough for a lot of rocket makers, you know? They would maybe potentially rather have the plan complete or taps into stuff about fear and control and that kind of, you know, but how do you, how do you get comfortable with the uncomfortable? Really is what we're talking about. - Look, I think it's one of those things that it can be a little bit of an innate ability. I think it's also the way that you've been brought up potentially at home with the trust from your parents on making decisions when you're a little younger. But I also, look, I've played a bit of rugby and you know, when you're younger, everyone's kind of good. And then when you get to the point where it's starting to be a potential career path, you get people telling you that you're not very good or you're not going to make it. And I think that I've just been able to see great fantastic models of leadership, of you know, team building, collaboration and all of those kind of things. But also, I think I've been trusted in a lot of spaces much younger than most people have been before. And I think just with me never pretending to be an expert in an area that I'm not, but being comfortable from learning from experts regardless of the hierarchy or the org chart, I think that's also really helped me is that I will go to a person that's just started at a place for two or three weeks. If I say them doing an amazing job, I'm more than happy to listen to them and hear about how they're achieving things. So I think, I think it's being comfortable at not always having to be the leader in every environment, even though the buck stops with you. But I also think it comes from doing the work, building a team and having a network of trust that I think allows you to know that you can fail safe as a leader because you're trying to tell everyone else that it's going to be okay later. But I also just think it, there's certain people that really kind of sit comfortably in that space. I think you can develop it. But I also think that you've got to work on things like your own EQ, you've got to be super self reflective and I think you've also got to have thick enough skin to know that you have to create people that will tell you that you're doing it wrong. And I think that's one of the things, again, I've been in spaces where it's a terrible ecosystem that has all of that. And I think I've also just been, as I've matured, also realized that regardless of how good someone thinks they are, they will make a mistake at some stage and we all make mistakes. And I think if you're comfortable to know that as long as a mistake is an incredibly traumatic for everyone, there's another day, there's another project and there's another way to make sure that that learning moves into a space where you don't make the same mistake again. - Yeah, so let's move back and double click on that trust in young people and letting the students really guide building the culture. That's a fascinating concept too, especially because adults, I think often they want to sign up the school and themselves, you know? You know, it serves kids in the community, but yeah, how do you transfer something that tries to younger people and let them leave? - So yeah, a big part of it is balance, is that, you know, they're at a stage of development where you do also have to create some infrastructure for them, but I think it's that realizing how quickly you learn when you're younger and realizing how slow you can learn as you get older is also, I think, within this current climate, the students have actually been dealing with tools and technology and community and difficult conversations and being exposed to things much younger that we probably potentially were, they've navigated a lot of spaces before we have or they just sit comfortably using so many different things that we're trying to be experts in. And so I think that it's a code design and the code designing also allows them to see value in themselves. but I think it also allows the person that's in charge of the pedagogy, the teaching and learning process. That is their area of expertise, but not necessarily the tool that they're trying to implement into the teaching and learning as actually being their area of expertise. So we lean in on the students, we ask them where they're at. We find out what kind of skill sets they have. We do a competencies and capabilities framework right from ninth grade to see what our students are actually capable of. And then the same way that we do it with our faculty and staff, we find spaces for them to trial things to iterate, to make mistakes, to get feedback. But I also think that you need to be able to see whether or not young people can do things before you were shown that they can't. And I think we've done that in a lot of spaces. Our student council, we make it open nine through to 12th grade. We have a house system at the school that is largely run by our student council and our senior leaders. We have advisory and peer support programs that are heavily driven by what they think is also important for them and where their knowledge gaps are. Because typically what we do is it's kind of like, okay, we're going to talk to you about mental health, but we're going to talk to you about it from an adult lens. We're going to talk about sex ed, but we haven't asked you about whether or not you know any of it anyway. And then all of a sudden we start getting to this space where we're spoon feeding to them what we think that they should be knowing. And if they already know it, we've just wasted an entire engagement opportunity for young people. And then also teaching them when they make mistakes. So when you give trusted a young age, it also gives an element of confidence. And that confidence can be hugely successful, but it can also lead them down a path of kind of where they think they're an expert before they are. And they make judgments and assumptions and want to know why a certain program can't be put in place because they don't understand the financial components, the scheduling, etc. But then walk them through the journey. But don't tell them that they've made a mistake and then just leave them. Tell them how that could have been approached in a different way. Man-tool them through the process, put them alongside maybe an older student or a more mature student or a student that's actually just experienced something like that and get them to do a little bit of zone-approximal development type stuff like get them to teach each other, get in the weeds, realize how you make mistakes, become a better leader, and then we always try to get them to feed it forward or feed it back. Yeah, I love that. And I think in my life, I eventually learned it certainly not while in high school. The school didn't create that space to learn from your mistakes. You know, it was pretty traditional. And my mom was a single mom. So I don't know that she had the energy to put up with me. Her solution was buying me a t-shirt that said, "I love my attitude problem." That I, you know, I wore that around throughout high school because I was, I guess, I was so proud looking back. That's not something to be proud of. All right, focus off on me back to the great work that you're doing well. I find that a lot of schools that maybe get a little more interested in entrepreneurship and maybe even like teaching some of those components within their school and their curriculum. But I know that you're focused on building intrapreneurs. And there's even fewer schools using that word. So talk to us about that work. Yeah, so I think the ecosystem at our school, what we're really trying to do is make sure that we're modeling all of these things around intrapreneurship through every aspect of the school, whether it's a faculty member, a staff member, or a student. And with that, we actually have to marry the learning that comes with it. So intrapreneurship is this idea of trying to look at the systems that either exist in their own spaces or in someone else's spaces within their own environment. And go through, we teach our students about systems thinking and analytical cool thinking, critical thinking, creative problem solving. And then what we do is we give them opportunities to see how the infrastructure currently exists in the school, whether it's a curriculum component, whether it's a micro course, whether it's the mapping and tracking of a student's academic journey. And then we get them to get into the weeds and the minutia and really try to think about how could this be improved? Is there an area where it could be more efficient? And then we just make sure that if they're coming up with great ideas is to give them the opportunity to work through it a little bit more and pair them up with potential mentors in the school. But we also do that with our faculty and our staff. It's that idea of really thinking deeply, thinking critically, but also knowing that every single person in our school is a potential changemaker for the environment they're currently in because they all experience the environment differently. So as a leader, if I come in and say, this is how it's going to happen. This is how you're going to experience it. And this is how you're going to deliver it. It becomes robotic, monotonous, and there's no value or ownership to anything that they're doing. And we want to create an environment where everyone's developing an insatiable love of learning. And if they have lost that learning in the teacher's situation is to find it and to find it, you need to give them some space to actually get excited about their craft and potentially come up with something that a student is going to absolutely love. And so we're really focused on professional development. But the big thing that we also do is it's building professional currency for every single person that's in the building. And we want everyone to know our meta language. We want them to know what it's like to be a Franklin employee, a faculty member, a student, an alum. And so to do that, you can't need to open the doors to more things. And then a big part of it is, you know, typically in leadership situations, we talk about strategic design or plans for the school. And most of the time, either myself, the executive team or the SLT will have done 90% of the framework. We would have put it out to some stakeholders to get a temp check on it. But then we say to everyone, "Oh, what do you think about this?" It's about to be polished as a catalog and then shared out with everyone else. So we decided to really strip it back. And we do things like strategic Saturday. So we actually invite our entire faculty and staff. They get to suggest some of the things that they might be problem spaces within the school or areas that they think can be a little bit better. And we split them into strategic or OE, like operational efficiency or effectiveness. And some of the faculty sit comfortably in the OE space and some of our faculty are incredibly strategic. And so once we see that and we model it, we then start to try and find spaces for our students to be able to do similar things. So when we talk about stakeholder involvement, ours is literally like they're in the weeds. They're looking at things, they're giving multiple lenses. And it just gives a sense of value to people where they then walk towards the fire a little bit more when things are also difficult. Because if they think they can solve it, they're not going to be silent because they know that they will be heard. And I think that creates a really great safe space for people to lay even without a title. Can we learn a little bit more about strategic Saturdays? Because that's not a concept I'm super familiar with. I know that you're leading that work. If I remember correctly from the pre-interview, those are voluntary, right? So not mandatory. In the context where I'm coming from, I'm trying to predict with the audience might be thinking teachers are burnt out, right? Like, "Saturday, will Saturday?" You know, and I understand it's voluntary. But I love the kind of, I want to, if you can make me see it, you know what I mean? Like bring me to a strategic Saturday. I'm also kind of curious, what kind of percentage of staff may participate and have there been any sort of things that have surprised you? I guess that key part of a strategic Saturday. Yeah. So to put it in real context is there's so many things that we have done to think about our faculty, that others and staff, that other schools maybe can't or haven't bothered to. So one of the things building this school that I really want to do is everyone's familiar with student-centered approach, right? The student at the centre, let's build everything around it so this tuner is at the core. I absolutely believe in it. That core will break, it will not grow and it will not be fantastic if the faculty that are supporting that core don't love what they do, don't feel valued and don't have some form of space to build themselves up and build that professional currency. So what we have done in our spaces, we've created in their schedule per week is two professional development periods that actually count towards their load. And our load is lower than the majority of New Jersey schools and Manhattan schools, not by much, but within that if you think that two periods or 100 minutes per week, you're actually working on professional development to build your own professional currency. One of those is strategically aligned to a school purpose and the other one is either collaborative, working with a P, working with another or something that's on your own journey, something that you can actually go and invest in. The other part is we let our teachers live their lives. If they have a free period and they want to go and get a coffee, they can go and get a coffee. If they want to go and do their groceries and put it in the giant fridges that we have, go and do that. If you need to leave early because your son or your daughter needs you to pick them up from school, go and pick them up from school. If you want to go and see an event or a song or whatever it is, let us know and then we can cover it because we know it's only going to be cyclical. It's not going to be every single day. That kind of paints the picture of the environment that we've created. The other part of it is because we care so much about them and because we're able to create spaces for them to have the autonomy in the style of teaching that they also deliver within the classroom to a degree, but largely completely autonomous. They also want the students to experience a better experience because they give them so much joy every day and our students show our teachers how much they appreciate things. So within that context, that will also paint a picture of what our culture and our school environment is like. Now first strategic, we've done it the last two years. First block was around 55, 60% and we've hit around the same mark. It was a little lower. There's one that just recently happened and that was because we actually had a week long kind of project based team transdisciplinary work, which was a decent amount of cognitive load. So I think our numbers probably would have been significantly higher. Have we just pushed that back a week or two, but also we give our faculty a little bit of a break in the lead up to some high marking periods for assessment. And so they come in and the best part about it is one they all freak out because they get to see me in in cities, right? I'm wearing an orange Franklin hoodie. I'm wearing a baseball cap that have no idea who this is at standing at the front. And then a lot of it is more about guiding them for this pretty much. Yeah, like every time you talk about how relaxed and children environment is, it's like, you know, very envious. But I think by creating that feel is that it is it's optional, but it's also a feel where it's not a business thing. It's like, this is a passion thing. You got into education, you got into teaching, you got about caring for young people for a reason, and we've just found a way to bring it back. And then I don't actually do anything on those days other than provide prompts and questions. So I do start the session by just guiding frameworks to let them know that, you know, this is this is something that we really want to achieve. This is something that we're really excited about, but it does look like a little bit of a future project because of a heavy lift. We're setting expectations so they're not trying to complete an entire task in one weekend, but just find little wins and little steps in certain spaces. But we ended up completing and finalising three out of the four areas that we're focusing on on this Saturday. And I literally just sat there and asked questions. I don't lead it. I'm a member of the team on those days. And then my job is to take all of that information, really think about all the variables that might challenge it, some fail spots, some roadblocks, and then not for me to try and come up with the solutions is send it back to the team that had the great ideas and the vision and the mission for what they wanted to achieve from it. And so it was, it's nine till two thirty. It's not even a little half day and they stay and we give them opportunity. We say, look, if everyone's feeling like, you know, they're maxed out and you would like to leave, it's one thirty. We've just finished lunch. Please let us know. No. They sit around or they go and share and move into different tables and different perspectives. And when you were saying, like, what's that like to build a school from scratch? Like, those are the moments where I wish everyone could at least experience it once as a head of school and as a head of school that has, you know, a great infrastructure and team to be able to kind of get things done and have the resources being an independent private school. But it's incredibly rewarding. It's so unbelievably rewarding to be a part of this system. Yeah. I mean, it sounds amazing. You know, I'm even thinking there might be something you can offer to the Rockest Makers of School leaders out there. Like, if you wish that people could see it when I charge a little ticket, right, come see it and maybe even generate a little bit of revenue for the school or put it towards a nice nonprofit or whatever you would want to do. You know, it is, it is your thing. So feel free to pass on the question, but you mentioned like frameworks and prompts. Is there a question or a prompt you're comfortable sharing with somebody tuning in that you might ask your team? Yeah. So look, there was four over the weekend, but one of the ones it's the biggest base of all out of them. And it's the one that's a much longer, a longer journey is, I referenced before about that we're kind of, we're always going through cyclical reflection and feedback and critical thinking. You know, for those of you that will see it from the on YouTube, like my board behind, this is the crazy that I'm talking about. We essentially try to understand where every student that's in our network might be coming from from a teaching and learning experience, from a curriculum and assessment experience. But then we also use this is OECD, PISA, Teams. It's like basically all the data. I sit in this space because I'm a little weird and this is my casual reading and I love it because if I can help in any way for my team to just be better informed or prepared. But then this is going through essentially in finding patterns in global curriculum that allow for great academic achievement with balance, leadership and social and emotional development, all kind of packaged into one. So our prompt was essentially how are we going to continue to innovate, how are we going to continue to apply what we think aligns with these messages from OECD and well economic forum and PISA, but at the same time not innovate and then burn out. And so these are the types of things where we're thinking so forward about the student, so forward about the curriculum, but making sure we don't think you forget about the people that are going to be delivering it. So while we're thinking of building, we've got to think about what are we building our framework for our faculty and staff. And so as you can imagine, that's not a three hour job. And the same way that we look at every student differently, every faculty and staff member brings their own staff and they bring their own baggies, they bring their own amazing skill sets. And so that's something that I don't think will ever be built out perfectly, but I think the more that we continue to work on it, the more we're going to get to a point where we do create a school system that is replicable around the world and does really help people continue to be in love with their craft. And that's the hard part is more spaces in education now. It's more for kids, not necessarily more depth, just more. And then for faculty, it means more time, more grading, more assessments, more pressure from parents because their son or daughter is not doing them all, but the more is not enough, we want more. And so that's an example of what happens on a Saturday. And then the other one was, we've got so much happening in our school and so many amazing programs, curriculum and course offerings. But performing arts was an area that we don't have something that's really what I'd classify as to the same level of anything else that we currently have. And so our team was just really working on small wins, MVP, your most viable product that we can actually do right now. How can we make people really excited about it? Because we have incredibly talented performers at our school, but they all perform in different things. So it's kind of like, it's almost creating a circus tent for performing arts. Like, how can we do that and get everyone under the tent at the same time? And the team did a ridiculously good job where we've got three wins. And we're going to put three different things on before the end of the year, which is rewarding for the internal, but also great messaging for the external that are really interested in our school. And that might be the only piece that they saw as missing. Yeah, right on. Well, you know, you're doing a lot of great work. And you recently got a pretty prestigious award around school innovations. So congratulations to that. What was that award mean to you? So much. It's about the start. It's about building the bedrock that I spoke about before. But I think for us, we've really purposely focused that innovation isn't a technology tool. And innovation occurs in every single space that a school offers a student, a stakeholder, a family, a teacher, a staff member. So I was really, I was so incredibly proud. And I've got to a point where I'm quite comfortable talking about anything in any place, but I have a really awesome photo from that experience. And the crowd is going ballistic and I'm standing there just completely, but not necessarily it looks for I look frozen. And it was, it was having to hold back the emotions. I was like, I'm about to speak to a lot of people watching this. And the first thing that I want to do is actually let a tear go down the eye. I like, I have to hold this together. How am I going to do this? And it was just so great because I could have actually thanked nearly every member of our faculty, our staff, and our student body because they've all played a role in all of these fantastic things that we have. Whether it's innovation in the make-alab, being recognized as a leading fab node in North America, it also could be in our professional development program that was recognized by middle states as just being an absolutely elite program for people to experience and being embedded in. And then it was just the things, the social and emotional work that we do, the academic care program that we have. And we knew we were up against some really great schools that were doing their niche or specialty area better than anyone else in the world. But I had a real confidence. Not necessarily we were going to win, but there would be in the upper echelon because we're doing so many good things that I think would compete against people that are focused on one. And that just meant the world to me. But it also pushes me to find a way for more people to find out about us. And the reason I want that is because I believe that every kid, every student that comes to our school will be better off becoming to our school. And I just want to try and find as many ways as possible for students to be able to experience our style of teaching and learning and support. But also from that standpoint of giving people that are in schools, a space to learn, love what they do again. And then the best part about it, you've a teacher that walks into a classroom that loves what they do. Engagement rates go through the roof, collaboration starts to really happen. And yeah, so incredibly proud. And but it's also my last thing that I said is like what's next. How can we make this something that's not about us? How can we actually go and help schools that can't do this kind of stuff? How can we introduce teachers to our community to help them in a system? You know, when they might not have the resources, that they have the work ethic and they have the skill sets. And so that's something that I really kind of challenge myself and our team to think about nearly every single day. Is this award is great? But the award means that we're actually leading in this space and we should be helping others get either closer, better, or whatever it may be, is just not to rest on our laurels and just hang it up on the wall as an award that we'll forget any year or two this time. And I think the awards specifically was called the most innovative score in the world by T4 education, right? And not a score one, that's for sure. And the score's called Franklin's score, right? So yeah, correct. And feel free to pass on this question if you don't want to go there. But I'm kind of curious, you mentioned holding the tear back, right? And that kind of thing, why hold it back? One because I had a set amount of time that I was allowed to say something and it was a live stream on YouTube. Okay. I think the other thing was is because, you know, and going back to wanting your questions before about, you know, sitting in the uncomfortable, I'm a very emotional person. A lot of people wouldn't agree with it. They'd maybe think I'm a little monotone and I can just sit comfortably in like the difficult spots all the time. But I also would say that I've got really good at suspending my emotions to make sure that whatever needs to be done at a particular time, I just find a way to get it done. But the other thing is like, when I start, it's very difficult to stop. So the one would have just literally been the floodgates. So, and then I would have just been a bubbling mess through the whole thing. So, but I let everyone know, and I think everyone knew, I think they could tell by how I was standing, how I responded, and also the photos, tell an incredible story. You know, we had firework type things going off. We had people screaming, we had teachers jumping out of their chairs. And I'm literally standing there, look like I was the only person in a street. So, yeah. Brilliant. Well, congrats again. (upbeat music) ODP Business Solutions, formerly Office Depot Business Solutions Division, has been a trusted partner for schools for 30 years. And ODP Business Solutions were by your side to meet your evolving education needs. Here's the thing about creating remarkable learning spaces. You need a partner who gets it. Someone who understands that transforming education isn't just about swapping whiteboards for smartboards. It's about reimagining what's possible. That's why Innovative School Leaders trust ODP Business Solutions. We don't just deliver supplies. We help you design dynamic learning environments that make students actually excited to show up. From tech integrations that bring lessons to life, to flexible furniture, that transforms any space into a collaboration zone. To sustainable solutions that teach by example, we've got everything you need to do school different. And the best part, you can get it all from a single supplier. That helps you simplify ordering and streamline budgeting while staying compliant with easy access to cooperative contracts. However, do you wanna advance ODP Business Solutions has 30 years of experience helping districts like yours get ahead? Visit ODPbusiness.com/education to learn more. That's ODPbusiness.com/education. Too many students with talent to be tomorrow's engineers give up. They're convinced they're just not good at school. And that's why PlayPiper was created. The name comes from their mission to repair the Leaky STEM pipeline in guide kids back toward discovery and innovation. 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As students learn, IXL adjusts to the right level of difficulty for each student. Close knowledge gaps and accelerate learning with IXL. Get started today at IXL.com/leaders. That's IXL.com/leaders. (upbeat music) I think where I'd like to go next is just thinking about building partnerships, right? It's a maybe an overlooked, under-discussed part, I think of a school leadership and so important, especially if you can find strong partners with your school community. So just you as a founding head, how do you sort of approach that work? Look, so I would say partnerships has been an area that we really purposely walk towards when we were first building the school. And I think the reason I wanted to do that is schools talk a lot about internships and they talk a lot about giving students like little tastes of things. But very rarely do they bring the professionals into the building. And so that's something that we really wanted to do because I wanted to be a pilot when I was 15 and 16 years of age and I actually managed to get into a program that was on that pathway. And it doesn't happen now, but I failed the color blind test. And so my dreams, my program, everything was kind of out of the window. And what I didn't want for students is to not have opportunities to pivot during their education process. That is to not reduce any rigor or any challenges that they face. But a lot of people come into say ninth grade, tenth grade, parent expectations are lawyer, doctor, finance, journalism, whatever it is. And they get on this track and they don't actually know what that track entails. They don't know how much research and study goes into being a surgeon. They don't know about the salary that you start with. And so what we really wanted to do is build partnerships in that real world space but actually bring them into the building. And so we've done that in a number of areas we've had. And we still continue to have them. We're in our fourth year. We have leaders in the financial district coming over to our school and doing financial literacy micro courses. We've had the VP from Nike coming in and talking about the importance of networking, the challenges of being in a high-pressure situation, financial advisor from CBS, co-designer from Fabletics, one of the leading support structures that mount sign-eye for the graduate program who also specializes in nephrology. And then we've also got a great journalism program at the school and economics and creative design and AI and machine learning. And we don't just create the curriculum and the opportunities to apply it. We want them to understand what that might look like if they're thinking of going into college or the career first later. And that's been, we've been able to do that because we didn't have any historical stuff to battle. We didn't have to worry about opinion or assumption by building a partnership or a relationship with a particular org or sorry, we've already got an agreement with someone else so therefore you can't take a better opportunity. And so that's been the external partnerships and then internally as well. We really wanted to build a partnership within our entire school. So we wanted our school to be threaded across the grades. So we've worked at partnerships from our 12th graders all the way down, building rapport, relationship, leadership strategies and then building an incredible partnership with our PA and also just our parents in general. So it does make it harder times because I almost have a direct line to me and that won't be possible as we continue to grow and expand, we've got other people that can help and facilitate in that space. It'd probably better skill than I am in navigating that. But I think it's that sense of we value every person that's been a part of our community and we give them time to be heard. We don't always agree with what they're suggesting and we don't always make a change because they've wanted something. But we have wanted to create partnerships in any space that potentially influences the student experience. And that's been huge. And then the other part is going out and finding faculty that don't necessarily just fit the mold. So finding people that have potentially had another career, finding people that only had a career in journalism and then had never taught before but coming up with a strategy can very well design way. to give them knowledge as a teacher by putting them alongside some of the best teachers that I've ever met and giving them a six month crash course. And then also giving some of our team that's at school, freedom to find stuff that they think will actually help our students from a partnership standpoint. So one of our teachers brings in different styles of engineers, cyclically, because everyone that says they want to be an engineer, they don't know what that looks like. That was off his own back. He suggested it, he went with it, we worked out some of the kinks and that's an ownership thing for him. That's been an incredible partnership for our students. All right. Yeah, when it comes to sustainability and as you guys grow, you know, I did an event a couple of years ago called the Sustainable School Leadership Sustainability Conference. But yeah, I remember one slide. It was just three parts, but you basically create an event, something, you sort of train and delegate and then you fire yourself and then keep going with the process, right? I used to be the main coach of all our group setting leadership, call it the mastermind, but I used to lead all the cohorts. No, I don't. I trained others, fired myself, and then that allowed me to do, you know, other new things. So yeah, just sharing that real quick. Speaking of podcast, Franklin unlimited pod, right? You got one going on there and what's that all about? So yeah, I think, you know, one of the things that in education that's that is I think really quite hard is a lot of people's understanding of education has actually been fed forward by a parent they know, a friend they know, they've read an article, you know, and so one of the things that we really wanted to do is we wholeheartedly have always believed in our mission and our vision of the school and the team that we've created, but we also wanted to hear from experts that acknowledge the types of things that we're we we're doing, but we also just want to continue to learn as a community. So I try and get contact with people that might, you know, some of our stuff might resonate with them, but also it might create a rub area and they can give us some advice or we can kind of like, you know, go back and forth to just talk about, you know, all of the things happening in education. And then I also created, you know, a space for our students to talk about their journey, I've experienced in Franklin and then also what kind of things through that that we should potentially think about changing or moving because they've gone on now, one's gone to North East and one's gone to UVA and, you know, they have absolute autonomy and freedom as an alarm to, you know, let us know what we could have done better, what was done, you know, really well. And so that podcast is really it's a mix of future thinking of Ed reimagining a lot of the stuff that everyone wants to reimagine and then just getting into places where we just talk about different perspectives. It's not about one being wrong or one being right, but I think it's just opening the eyes and ears to the education space that it doesn't have to be so dog-eat dog. And what we're really trying to work towards is actually making kids and everyone else love learning and that's the problem. We don't do that enough. We're all competing for the same student to come to your school, but that doesn't mean you can't work alongside each other to make your program better or someone else's program or just, you know, the exposure and experience for students. And so the podcast, I'm really hoping that, you know, as much as I like it, I'm really looking forward to it being a Franklin driven student driven podcast moving forward. And that will probably be, you know, iteration three. I think where I was, you know, I'll become redundant and I'll give it to the students and make sure that they do a and much better job than I do with it. Cool. Well, you know, I'm going to give you advice that you didn't ask for, but you know, announce that you won't be leading the podcast sooner than you feel comfortable with, right? And I'm sure you're already sort of developing the bench talent, so to speak so that when you decide, okay, this is your show, guys, right? You can just step away and be proud of what they create so you can, you know, go do something else, but that's, yeah, that's cool. That vision and then, yeah, just hearing back from Alon's, right? From, I think you said, UVA and I forget the other place, but to hear what, what are we doing? Well, how could we change things? And obviously, like that, the topic of re-imagined education, that's all I want to talk about. So, that's great. I think, no, I issue one more question. Like, when you were doing the podcast and talking about re-imagined education, was there a certain aspect of that topic that you dove into that maybe you didn't expect? But then, then you were there and you're like, man, I am so thankful that we had this conversation. Yeah, there's, there were, look, honestly, there was a point in nearly every single episode where it was an aha moment for me, even though I thought I knew about all of the stuff that they were talking about. And I'd seen that space of the younger, the younger community and younger generation living and talking about the same thing, but just coming at it from a completely different perspective. So, you know, we talk about that, you know, safe areas to fail and we all talk about it, but, you know, there's a lot of times where as adults, we don't follow through on it. You know, so we give it to them a couple of times and the next minute, we punish them because we forgot to tell them that it actually does count. And so that was a couple of, you know, those things really, that resonated with me a lot where it was, you have to follow through on what you're trying to provide and say to students because there is no way for them to really change that infrastructure for themselves if you're the only person that can change it for them and you decide to change the goalposts. And I just, you know, and it happened in a lot of space. It's building high performing teams is, you know, when you say something, you need to really push as hard as you can to not change that unless it's absolutely necessary because you've given them that, that guideline, the resources and they've been working towards it. And so I think a lot of it about reimagining high school and reimagining education in general is really making sure that you're always open-minded, regardless if you think that you have the answer is always having those one or two questions up your sleeve to make sure that you're still continuously asking the question when you think you're a close to 100% of having the answer is just making sure that you're constantly open to perspectives. You also reimagining is not a singular process. And so for me, it's that idea of the more people I can talk to, the different generations that I can engage with, the more I give people projects and don't touch them and let them see what they do with it is again, it's all down to that trust, but being when you've created a framework, you have to be able to let them know that they can trust you for the entire time. But the podcast has just been so great from a, I think, a standpoint of bringing in so many different experts that don't agree on the same thing, but letting them have a chance to talk about it in a way where it's not an argument. Because I do not know there's some to respect. So many spaces at the moment is as soon as there's something wrong, it's like, well, research suggests this. So can you please stop talking about it? It's just letting them have the space to talk through things and then more questions. It's like what you're doing right now, right? Is the podcast that the most enjoyable, the ones to listen contain the most questions, not necessarily always the most answers or the most direction. And so I think that was something from it that I've continued to reflect on and make sure I try to make it a part of my process even off the podcast. It's just trust questions and let the younger people have a voice and to see what they have up this leave. Yeah. That question piece, you know, is asking the questions, that's my role, right? As the podcast host, and I do really try to let the guests lead and get their point of view out there. And I don't try to, I add some things when I do too much, but I always find it wild that people hire me to come in and speak and, you know, present in this kind of stuff. I mean, I've written books, but, you know, I barely, I don't talk that much on my show, right? Compared to the guest. And so, but as people want to bring me in, that's fantastic. All right. Look, I can say why it makes sense. So it's, look, the, I think if you have a look at your 10 years and the amount of different themes, the amount of different people, the amount of different kind of education jokes, the things that people like, they sit comfortably in it and they're like, this is cool just to listen to. And I might not be knowledgeable in it, but I'm along for the ride. You can't create that without being knowledgeable, curious and interested in all of the spaces that influence education. So I think that's, you know, there's not many. There's not a lot of people have an interest in everything in education and also push back on the things that everyone still wants to keep doing. And so it's also just the interest piece. The fact that you've committed yourself wholeheartedly to this, I think is why people want to listen to it. And even just have you asked questions to see what the rest of the group has, you know, invited you in, have to say. I think sometimes that's super valuable because sometimes people are too scared to answer their bosses or their reports when they ask those questions, but you might be able to get it out of them that's more authentic and genuine. Yeah, that's a good reflection. I appreciate that. So thank you. Okay. Cool. Well, the last three questions I asked, my guess, are always the same. We're at that point of the show. Well, if you could put one message on all school marquees around the world for a single day, what would your message be? I would say leave your own learning journey rather than someone else's. And the reason for that is you see it so much, especially in the US space. And I've been fortunate to teach around the world and learned from a lot of great educational leaders. There's a lot of go and do this because someone else has done this before and it seemed to get them into this place. And you know, the really successful individuals in the world are those that develop a way to be agile, be critical thinkers, but also love learning and their abilities capabilities and competencies will also put them into great spaces. But if they start living someone else's learning journey, they'll get into spaces that they don't love and they won't love their career. And before you know it, they're working for their bank account, not because they actually love everything that they do in their job. So you probably stick with that. Talk to us about your dream school well, that one, there has no constraints in terms of resources, the army limitations, your ability to imagine, or be the three guiding principles building the dream school. So I mean it, I mean that's that's the best part about you know where I am right now is this is my dream school. And I think I think it's really hard to put it into three because there's not many people that have had the chance to do this. But I would say the first thing that you really, you know, if I was to say principle number one is to know what you want to stand by in a week's time, in 10 years time and 20 years time knowing that it might change. But when you make the decision you've got to be able to stand with it, being able to find a team that genuinely believes in the mission and the vision of the school and trust them to lead in their spots would be my second one. And then build a space where the students get to build the culture. Now that doesn't mean that they get car blinds free autonomy in every space, but let them lead and give them the opportunity to be successful in leadership. And that can be little piecemeal little tiny feed bits to get them going. But have that as a big part of what you do because they're going to be the people that will most likely bring the next generation into the building or won't be the teachers because they'll probably go as well eventually. It's the culture that the students build that will allow the narrative to continue as a legacy moving forward. And I think that's probably you know almost bedrock pillar. You know, it would be like that's that's the one that you're going to make the tightest and the strongest. So we covered a lot of ground today. Well, enough everything we discussed. What's the one thing you want to ruckus maker to remember is to get people along for the journey and to trust them. I think I spoke about trust a lot through this process because regardless if you're in a role that has a title, everyone can lead it to school, but you're not going to know if they can if you don't ask them the questions. And so I think it's try to create that environment of trust and then give people an opportunity to lead even if they don't have a title. Hey ruckus makers, thanks again for pressing play. I hope you enjoyed the show as much as I enjoyed creating it for you. And before you go, if today's episode shifted something in you so that you want to do school different or maybe have a new idea of a how to reimagine education on your campus, then check out my principal coach. It's your AI-powered leadership mentor. It's trained on 10 years of mastermind and private coaching experience that I've had. It's like having a world class ruckus maker mentor in your pocket 24/7. You can start your free seven day trial at myprinciplecoach.com. you